hoops.ws draft

[elindholm]

PART I

General

We have 16 teams and the draft has 12 rounds. That means that 192 players will be selected. The site lists all players who stand a reasonable chance of being on an NBA roster this season, including (in most cases) established players whose injuries are likely to make them unable to perform, such as Todd MacCulloch.

THE DRAFT WILL START FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 AT 11:00 A.M. MST/PDT (18:00 GMT, 20:00 CENTRAL EUROPE). Unless I get convinced to change it. Again.

Each manager has 21 hours on his clock for the entire draft. Whatever time of your allotted 21 hours you don’t use for your first pick will be left over for your second pick, and so on. Note that this means you have an average of 1 hour and 45 minutes per pick, but you might decide to make some picks more quickly than that and take extra time with others. It also means that the draft may take up to 14 days, although that is unlikely.

If your clock expires, your picks will be skipped. You can still make draft choices, however. Get onto the site as soon as you can, and you will be allowed to make up for any picks that have been skipped so far. For instance, if you were supposed to have the #126 and #143 picks and your clock ran out, and you get on while the manager with the #148 pick is on the clock, you can make your #126 and #143 picks as soon as you want. But if you also have the #155 pick, you won’t be allowed to make that yet.

Since you don’t get new time for each new pick, once your clock expires, you’re out of time for the rest of the draft. You’ll be skipped for all later picks unless you have set a “contingency list.” See below for an explanation of how contingency lists work.

Draft order

The draft order is determined randomly by the site, not by the commissioner. Here’s how it works:

For the first round (picks #1-#16), all 16 teams will be placed in a random order. Then, for the second round (#17-#32), the teams will be placed in the reverse order. So if you happened to get the #1 overall pick, you will also have the last pick in the second round, #32. If you have the fourth-to-last pick in the first round, #13, you’ll also have the fourth (not fourth-to-last, just fourth) pick in the second round, #20.

Then, for the third round (#33-#48), an entirely new order is generated. Where you draft in the first and second rounds has nothing to do with where you draft in the third round. The fourth round (#49-#64) is the reverse of the third round, the same way that the second is the reverse of the first. If you pick sixth in the third round (#38), you’ll pick sixth-to-last in the fourth round (#59).

And that’s how it goes, with each odd-numbered drafting round being a new random order, and each even-numbered drafting round being the reverse of the round immediately before it. The entire draft order, all twelve rounds, is posted on the site as soon as the draft starts, so you’ll be able to see exactly where all of your picks are.

 

[elindholm]

PART II

Contingency lists

You may want to arrange in advance for certain picks to be made while you aren’t on the site. You do this by defining a “contingency list.” On your contingency list, you should list all of the players you want in the order you want them, top to bottom. For instance, let’s say you have pick #9 coming up, and so far three players have been drafted: Tim Duncan, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kevin Garnett. Let’s say your top choice for your pick is Dirk Nowitzki. You don’t know whether he’ll be available at #9, but if you put him on the top of your list, you’ll get him if he’s still on the board. Then, below Nowitzki, you’d place your other choices for the #9 pick – Tracy McGrady, Chris Webber, Elton Brand, whoever. The site will take the highest player on your list who’s still on the board when your turn comes.

It should be true that you’ll get a player from your contingency list even if your clock has completely expired when you get to the pick, but I’m not certain about that.

Once a player is drafted, he gets removed from all managers’ contingency lists. If your contingency list is empty by the time your turn comes up, you’ll just go on the clock. If you have plenty of clock time, there’s nothing wrong with leaving your contingency list empty and just waiting until it’s your turn.

One word of caution about contingency lists: they apply to all future picks! This can be tricky if you have two picks that are close together. For example, let’s say you have the #109 and #114 picks, and the manager at #100 is on the clock. You decide that you want a Guard with your #109 pick, so you identify several promising Guards and put them on your contingency list. Chances are, when your turn comes at #109, you’ll get one of them. But the others will still be on your list, and if the other managers in the meantime haven’t drafted many Guards, you might get another player from the same list when your turn comes up again at #114. So keep an eye on how close together your picks are, and plan accordingly.

Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to establish a contingency list before the draft actually starts. (At least, it wasn’t last year.) So you’ll definitely want to log on to the site shortly after the draft starts, either to make your first-round pick or to set up your contingency list. Remember, in the worst case scenario, your 24-hour clock will start, but that should still give you plenty of time.

Position changes

In the post on creating your team, I explained about voting on position changes. Unless the site mechanics have changed, you cannot propose a vote on a player until that player is on your roster. That means you may find yourself thinking about drafting a player on the possibility that your fellow competitors will approve a position change for him. Undertake this strategy at your own risk. For what it’s worth, in last year’s league, position changes were usually approved if they were supported by public sites like ESPN.com or NBA.com. For example, if the hoops.ws site listed Pau Gasol as a Forward but ESPN.com said that Gasol was a “forward-center,” we would approve the position change making Gasol a Forward-Center in the fantasy league.

 

[elindholm]

PART III

Trades

As soon as the draft starts, trade proposals start flying. You can make trades involving drafted players, future picks, or both. You can even make a trade that will give you an extra draft pick, for a total of 13. Offering a trade is very easy to do once you get to the Trade page. Your offer will remain “on the table” until

(1) the other manager accepts or rejects it,
(2) one of the players involved changes teams (or one of the picks involved gets made), or
(3) you take the proposal down.

So after you’ve made a trade offer, don’t forget about it! The other manager might be taking a while to think about it, but if you’ve changed your mind, be sure to cancel the offer.

Be very careful when deciding on a trade someone has offered you. If you accidentally click the wrong button and accept a trade you meant to reject, too bad – it’s done.

As a courtesy to everyone, if someone has offered you a trade that you know you aren’t interested in, please reject it instead of just leaving it on the table.

Finally, sometimes you’ll want to discuss a trade issue with another manager. You can include some brief comments in your trade offer, but it’s often easier to post a message in the “Trash Talk” forum. This has the disadvantage of being public, but that has not been a big problem in the past. I read somewhere that the site may be establishing private message capability.

Adjusting your roster

Once the draft is over, any player not on a roster is a free agent. If you see someone you’d rather have than one of your current players, you can go to the Lineup page and make the adjustment. (It’s very easy once you see the page.) You can also pick up a free agent whenever your team has fewer than 12 players on it, for instance if you made a trade that involved giving up an extra player.

You can have up to 12 players on your roster for any game. However, in between games, it is possible to have more than 12 players. This might happen, for example, if you make a trade that brings you an extra player. You can hold onto your “13th player” until the next “lineup deadline” (which is basically when the game starts; more on that later), but realize that it will always be the player at the bottom of your lineup who gets dropped when that deadline comes. So be sure that you’ll be keeping the 12 players that you really want.

Scouting

Okay, get to work! If you click on “Toys” on the main league page (top right), you’ll get access to last year’s statistics. (And statistics from earlier years, for that matter.) The two columns likely to be of most interest to you are “FPPG” and “FPPM,” which are Fantasy Points Per Game and Minute. Click on the top of either of these columns to sort by them. Note that these are what last year’s players would have scored in a league that used our current scoring system, which is slightly different from the scoring system used in last year’s league. And, of course, this year’s rookies aren’t listed, so you’re on your own for evaluating them.

 

[elindholm]

Any questions?

 

[Joe Mama]

Eric,

You are going well above and beyond the duties of a fantasy league manager. It's great. Thanks a bunch. Hopefully it will make the league nice and competitive. I would hate to whip a bunch of people who have no idea what they're doing.

Joe Mama

 

[Chaplin]

Yeah definitely.

On one hand, I feel grateful I don't have to commish again. On the other hand, I feel like I was a really bad commish when I WAS on the site last year and years before because I didn't go as in depth as you.

 

[elindholm]

It's just my nature to try to explain things carefully. Some would call it patronizing and overcontrolling.

Chaplin, I don't think you were a bad commissioner at all last year. The scoring glitch was a totally bizarre bug that no one could have foreseen.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

Eric,

I beg you to start the draft after the weekend of the 4th. If you start it on Monday the 6th, I may be able to check in now and then.

Chris

 

[elindholm]

Fine with me. Will that create a serious problem for anyone else?

 

[slinslin]

Yes for me.
My classes at university start on October 6th so I won't be able to stay up as long and that might be a problem if the draft starts on a Monday.
If I have bad luck all of my picks will come up when I am sleeping that will quickly kill the 24h total time I got for the draft.

Why not start a few days earlier?

 

[elindholm]

The draft will be slower than last year's, so everyone will have to be able to make picks on both weekends and weekdays. I think everyone will have to make use of their contingency lists once in a while. Slinslin, many of your picks will come up while you're sleeping anyway, even if we start early in the weekend. To a lesser extent, that will be true for everyone.

We discovered last year that there's no single time that works well for everyone -- we have four countries represented among this league's managers. I think that the question of whether it is possible for someone should take priority over the question of whether it's convenient.

We could start the draft on Friday (October 3). I cannot do it on Thursday because I work all day Thursday. It will take some time to enter the divisions into the site and get everything else set up, and that has to be done immediately before the draft starts.

I think Wednesday (October 1) is too early, especially since I just told everyone we would start on Saturday. But if there is a strong push for Wednesday from many people, we could consider that.

Chris, does starting on Friday help you at all? Will you have absolutely no possible computer access during the weekend? You could at least make your first two picks on Friday, but you'd need contingency lists to get you through the weekend.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

If we started early Friday, but I drive out to LA on Friday afternoon.

 

[Chaplin]

I have classes from 9-6 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday as well. But I think I can probably manage my draft, since I can go home at lunchtime. But then again, I'm not so sure...

 

[elindholm]

Chaplin, are those every weekend, or just October 3-5? One other possibility is to start the draft a week or so later.

 

[Chaplin]

Originally posted by elindholm
Chaplin, are those every weekend, or just October 3-5? One other possibility is to start the draft a week or so later.

Just next weekend only.

 

[Joe Mama]

Just start it the following weekend. I'm sure it will only take three days at the most to complete.

Joe Mama

 

[elindholm]

I can't start it on Saturday 10/11, because that is a big work day for me. I don't mind having the draft in progress then, but I have to have a decent chunk of time right before it starts, to set everything up.

How about Friday 10/10, at the same 11:00 a.m. start time? I'd reduce the time available per manager from 24 hours to 21 hours (total), meaning an average of 1 hour and 45 minutes per pick. This means the draft would take a maximum of 14 days, so even if everyone used their entire clock, we'd have a few days before the season kicked off. Most likely we'd still have at least a week.

If anyone has a problem with Friday 10/10, please let me know within the next couple of days with a post or e-mail.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

That's cool with me. I should be home from my trip by like 3 or 4 PM so I won't use too much clock time.

 

[slinslin]

If we could just find a day , time when everyone can be online for 2 hours we could just do the whole draft in one.

 

[elindholm]

If we could just find a day , time when everyone can be online for 2 hours we could just do the whole draft in one.

Yes, we could try to do it that way, but we aren't going to. I would like more time to think about my picks, and I also want to be able to work out some trades during the draft. And I know I'm not the only one.

 

[Joe Mama]

Originally posted by elindholm
If we could just find a day , time when everyone can be online for 2 hours we could just do the whole draft in one.

Yes, we could try to do it that way, but we aren't going to. I would like more time to think about my picks, and I also want to be able to work out some trades during the draft. And I know I'm not the only one.

Here here. I really don't like fast drafts like that. I like a little time to ponder my picks and look for trades.

Joe Mama

 

[elindholm]

Okay, it sounds like we have a consensus.

The start date of the draft is officially moved to Friday, October 10. It will still start at 11:00 PDT/MST (18:00 GMT, 20:00 central Europe).

Also, the time per manager will be reduced from 24 to 21 hours for the entire draft. This guarantees that the draft will take no longer than 14 days.

I trust there will be no further objections.

 

[Chaplin]

Originally posted by elindholm
Okay, it sounds like we have a consensus.

The start date of the draft is officially moved to Friday, October 10. It will still start at 11:00 PDT/MST (18:00 GMT, 20:00 central Europe).

Also, the time per manager will be reduced from 24 to 21 hours for the entire draft. This guarantees that the draft will take no longer than 14 days.

I trust there will be no further objections.

Last year I believe I could actually stop the timer at various times (like when we all sleep). I realize that guys like slinslin will be drafting when we are sleeping, but if there was a way to actually save time, it might be worth looking into, even if it's for just a couple hours.

 

[elindholm]

Hmm, I haven't read anything about that, but I'll look into it.

But really, I'm sure the draft will go much faster. As I recall, whatever time limit you set up last time (it might have been something like three hours per pick?) made it possible that the draft wouldn't be done by the start of the regular season. But you had correctly predicted that most people would make their picks more quickly than that, so it just flew along with no problem. The only thing was that you kind of had to be on the lookout for stragglers, skipping them if they got slow.

If everything goes according to plan, this should be the best of both worlds: a draft that goes by as quickly as people want it to, but that also can slow down once in a while if someone needs some extra time -- and yet, which is guaranteed to be done at least a few days before the season starts.

That's the plan. We'll see if it works.

 

[Chaplin]

Well, my concern really is that, say, someone in Phoenix has a pick come up at midnight or 1am, and then doesn't check until 9am when they get into work. That's 8 hours blown from there total time--and then of course in the course of 14 days, that can happen a few times. Then they're screwed just because their particular picking time happened to be at 2am in the morning. How do you combat that? Or just cross our fingers and hope for the best?